


A treatise on bed sharing

by clottedcreamfudge



Series: Tooth-rotting Malec nonsense [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alec Lightwood Deserves Nice Things, Alternate Universe - Human, First Kiss, Fluff, Gay Disaster Alec Lightwood, Getting Together, Idiots in Love, M/M, Magnus Bane Deserves Nice Things, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Pining, Sharing Body Heat, Sharing a Bed, Soft Alec Lightwood, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29540280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clottedcreamfudge/pseuds/clottedcreamfudge
Summary: Alec attempts to prepare himself for being platonically close to a man who spends most nights running around his head and metaphorically fucking shit up; his preparations include around an hour of writing and rewriting a text to Izzy that ends up just saying‘help’.Her response -‘are you being a gay disaster again?’- is not helpful at all, not least because Alec is literallyalwaysa gay disaster. The question does not need to be asked. Izzy knows this.➼Alec and Magnus's apartment floods.
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Tooth-rotting Malec nonsense [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2170269
Comments: 54
Kudos: 294





	A treatise on bed sharing

Alec thinks he’s been handling his debilitating crush on Magnus pretty well, all things considered. His main concerns when placing an ad for a new roommate had been them either turning out to be a serial killer, or someone who thinks it’s okay to finish the milk and then put the empty container back in the fridge.

Looking at _you_ , Jace.

What Alec _hadn’t_ been expecting was Magnus Bane; beautiful, self-assured, and the source of every single ounce of sexual frustration Alec’s felt since his ad was answered by the man a year ago.

Magnus is openly bisexual, wears perfectly coordinated outfits, and basically lives to make Alec’s chest hurt. He wears soft-looking, low-slung yoga pants when he practises his daily Pilates and meditation in the living room - _without a shirt_ \- and has the audacity to smile fondly at Alec when he haltingly reminds him to drink water.

Even though _Alec’s_ the one who’s thirsty. Literally all the time. But like… in his _heart._

Anyway, he’s been handling it. In fact, there are even some positives! For example, his water bill went _way down_ when Magnus moved in, because he hasn’t actually taken a single hot shower in the past twelve months. Also, he’s spent more time at the archery range than the previous five years combined, and his draw time and aim are pretty much the best they’ve ever been.

Today, however, may well break him.

“Apartment above you got a burst pipe,” the landlord (who is called either Mark or Matt - possibly Mike) is explaining to a very pissed off Alec and a quietly amused Magnus, the hardwood beneath them dotted here and there with puddles of slightly gritty looking water. “We’re getting someone out tomorrow, but the cold snap has caused a lot of problems and this ain’t the only building feeling it.”

“And yet,” Magnus says with a raised eyebrow, “it is surely the only building wherein the landlord won’t be providing alternative accommodations.” The guy looks a little shifty, but shrugs as he zips his coat up against the pervasive cold of the hallway.

“Like I said, it’ll only be a day. You got renter’s insurance?”

“I _work_ in insurance,” Alec says drily, and it’s worth the dread that pools in his stomach every time he remembers how much he _hates_ his job just to see the look of horror on his landlord’s face. He’s far from the worst landlord in New York, but he could probably be better.

“Great,” Mark/Matt/Mike says weakly, bobbing his head in an awkward nod. “That’s good, yeah. Anyway - I’ll have someone round tomorrow. Take it easy, guys.” Then he leaves, quite possibly to go and hyperventilate about one of his tenants actually having a single clue what a landlord's responsibilities are to the people in their building.

“Well, if it’s only going to be one night, I’m almost certain I can deal with the floor,” Magnus says as they close the door to their very damp apartment. Alec shoots him a surprised look.

“Why would you need to sleep on the floor?” Magnus raises his eyebrows.

“Darling, your bedroom may have survived, but my own mattress was not so lucky.” Alec gapes at him. He’d _assumed_ it was just the living room and kitchen that had been affected, his own room having somehow managed to remain dry; it hadn’t occurred to him that Magnus might not have been afforded the same courtesy.

The sofa is also pretty wrecked, though given how old and ratty it is, Alec has to squint to see the difference. It’s already pretty stained from the time Jace forcibly threw a party here for Alec’s birthday - which he had neither asked for nor wanted - and someone ended up spilling a two litre bottle of red wine all over it. Until that day, Alec hadn’t even been aware that red wine _came_ in two litre bottles.

“Shit, Magnus, I’m sorry,” he says with a sigh, running a hand through his hair and leaning wearily against the kitchen island. They’d eaten homemade burgers here last night, and Magnus had gotten sauce in the corner of his mouth. Alec hadn’t told him, hadn’t been able to form the words without feeling like some kind of horrible cliche because all he’d wanted to do was lean forward and lick it off.

Alec needs to do the dishes. They’re still out, and now covered in gross ceiling water.

“Why are _you_ sorry?” Magnus asks, looking perplexed. “Did you sabotage the pipes? Do you have some terrible and age-old feud with indoor plumbing?” Alec huffs out a laugh.

“It doesn’t seem fair, that’s all,” he says with a shrug, still smiling a little. Magnus always makes him smile.

“Well, unless you’re going to offer me your bed,” Magnus says with a wide grin that borders on lewd, “I’ll be quite alright with the blow-up mattress and spare duvet.”

“Those are _both_ in the hall closet,” Alec says with mounting horror, ignoring the bed comment entirely. Magnus’s face falls just a little as they both glance towards the closet in question; even though the leak upstairs has been isolated, there’s a puddle of water still slowly spreading from underneath the closed door. Alec sighs and scrubs a hand over his face, thinking through all the options and wondering whether his bank account can handle just one night in a cheap hotel.

Spoiler alert: it really can’t.

“That does rather throw a spanner in the works,” Magnus muses.

“You can-” Alec stops himself. Magnus can _what?_ Share _his_ bed? Because that wouldn’t end badly at all. He normally wouldn’t trust his sleeping self to behave anyway, but Jace and Izzy have both been so busy with their work recently that he’s also a little more touch-starved than usual. He and Magnus hug occasionally, but if anything, it usually winds Alec up even tighter; it’s hard to find hugging him relaxing when every atom of his being wants to wind around Magnus like some kind of embarrassing, needy octopus.

“Alexander?” Magnus prompts him, and Alec just-

“You can stay in my bed. With me. It’s a double, so it’s not like there’s isn’t enough space.” Magnus’s eyebrows have climbed a fair way up his forehead by now, and Alec doesn’t blame them; they’re probably trying to escape Alec’s idiot blast radius.

“Given the look on your face, darling, I’ll give you a moment to think about whether or not that’s something you’re actually comfortable with,” Magnus says slowly; there’s no judgment in his tone, or even in his expression, but Alec feels a bit like he’s being tested anyway.

“This is just my face,” he argues, folding his arms and trying to relax his shoulders just a little bit. It’s just one night. He’s an adult. Alec’s survived every single instance of Magnus coming out of the bathroom with nothing but a towel around his waist, flawless skin still glistening with water droplets and his hair in damp disarray; he can deal with _this._ “I’m fine with it if you are.”

Magnus looks doubtful, but he nods and thanks Alec, before they return to their pre-landlord-visit attempts to rescue what they can from the deluge.

When Magnus bends over to pick up a scientific journal from the sodden coffee table, Alec decides to go and deal with the kitchen instead. It’s probably safer in there. Fewer beautiful people bending over in well-fitted jeans.

In the intervening hours, Alec attempts to prepare himself for being platonically close to a man who spends most nights running around his head and metaphorically fucking shit up; his preparations include around an hour of writing and rewriting a text to Izzy that ends up just saying _‘help’._ Her response - _‘are you being a gay disaster again?’_ \- is not helpful at all, not least because Alec is literally _always_ a gay disaster. The question does not need to be asked. Izzy knows this.

Predictably, nothing he does actually helps prepare him for the sight of Magnus, sleep-soft and dressed in yoga pants and a tank top, stepping into his room like he’s worried Alec’s about to change his mind and kick him out. He’s taken off his makeup, and while Alec is a huge fan of the striking sensuality of Magnus in eyeliner, the softness of his face without it holds its own appeal. 

“Good thing you made me get all these weird cushions,” Alec says conversationally, ignoring the way his voice sounds a little higher than normal as he vaguely gestures to his bed with one hand. “We could probably build a fort with them. Or use them as sandbags if there’s more flooding.”

“They’re _throw pillows,”_ Magnus says tartly, but he’s relaxed a little, so - mission accomplished. “Your room was dire before I moved in, and if you had the slightest bit of sense you’d see that.” Alec’s _life_ was dire before Magnus moved in, he thinks to himself. It was also less fraught with one-sided sexual tension and very cold showers, but Alec’s kind of fine with that. Mostly. Or at least he’s _used_ to it.

“I still don’t think I needed a framed definition of the _definitely made-up_ word ‘hangry’ for my wall,” Alec argues with a reluctant grin. Magnus snorts and throws himself gracefully onto the bed, shuffling so his back’s against the wall, feet tucked beneath him.

“The tantrum you had when our Thai food was twenty minutes late last week says otherwise.”

“It wasn’t a _tantrum,”_ Alec says with an eye roll, “it was a treatise on the imperfections of their pre-order system. What’s the point of allowing people to pick a time for their food to arrive, if they’re just going to send it round whenever they feel like it? It’s the _illusion of choice_ I don’t like.”

“It was a rant,” Magnus says, sounding amused in spite of himself, “and it only stopped when the food got here because you’d rather die than be rude to a service worker.”

“Yeah, well,” Alec says, shrugging awkwardly and falling onto the bed so he’s sitting against the wall too, “minimum wage jobs suck. It wasn’t his fault New York traffic is the worst.”

“Which was part of your rant-”

 _“Treatise,”_ Alec corrects, and when Magnus starts laughing at him, it’s the most natural thing in the world to join in. He relaxes a little against the wall. This is going to be _fine_.

➼

This is not going to be fine.

“But you’re so warm,” Magnus says plaintively, trying once again to shove his freezing cold toes inside the cuffs of Alec’s sweatpants. “How are you so _warm_ when it’s like minus ten outside?” Alec’s always warm, honestly, but right now it’s probably because Magnus is within three feet of him, trying to touch him in some capacity now that the lights are out. The force of his embarrassment (among other feelings) could probably generate enough heat to see most of New York through the winter.

“Because I’m not outside?” Alec grunts, trying to ignore the faint tingling in his legs where Magnus is pressing his feet. “Put some socks on.” This is a very sensible suggestion, and not at all grounds for Magnus to push harder against his calves with his icy toes.

“The socks are far away,” Magnus explains slowly, like he’s speaking to a child. “You’re here, where I am. I’ve run the math and I’m afraid it’s just the most logical solution to the issue at hand.” Alec turns over to face Magnus with a huff, glaring at him a little in the dim light of the room. It’s probably the wrong move; even the gloom can’t obscure how beautiful he is, and Alec’s heart jumps pathetically in his chest at the simple fact that he’s looking at Magnus in _his_ bed.

It’s not like he’s dreamed about this every other day for the last year or anything.

“Your math is shitty,” he says firmly, and Magnus’s little snort of pleased laughter makes something in his stomach swoop. 

“Your _mattress_ is shitty,” Magnus bites back, still smiling in the dark, and Alec desperately wants to say something back, something to keep this stupid little conversation going but he can’t. The only thing he can think to say is ‘I’ll get a new one if you promise to stay here with me forever,’ but that’s not friendly back-and-forth, that’s _real;_ it’s what he wants, with a quiet desperation, every hour of every day.

He’s such a fucking disaster.

“Alexander, are you alright?” Of course, while Alec’s been having a good old chat to himself in his own head, he’s essentially been staring at Magnus like some kind of weirdo; Magnus looks, if not uneasy, then at least a little unsettled, and Alec feels fear grip him.

“Sorry. This is weird.” He doesn’t mean it like that, but the slight stiffening of Magnus’s shoulders is already happening, so it’s a bit late to take it back now. In fact, for some reason his mouth opens again, and he makes things _worse._ “I mean, we don’t really do this, do we? There’s probably a reason we don’t do this.”

“Ah,” Magnus says softly, a certain weight to his voice that only a conversation under cover of darkness seems capable of producing. “You’re uncomfortable.”

“Well, I mean,” Alec stumbles over his words, trying in vain not to fuck this up any further, “it’s not _ideal_ , but it’s - y’know. Fine. I _said_ it was fine.”

“You don’t seem fine,” Magnus says calmly, and Alec just _breaks_ , okay - that’s the only explanation for the absolute torrent of nonsense that comes out of his mouth next.

“Well, I’m me and you’re - y’know, _you_. You probably know what I’m talking about, I mean, we’ve lived together for a year. Neither of us are very subtle people. Being in my bed is probably uncomfortable for _you_ , if anything.” Because honestly, Magnus has to _know_ how Alec feels. He’s walked into so many door frames and hip-height obstacles in the past twelve months that Jace had actually pulled his punches at their last sparring session, then asked him if Magnus was _treating him right._

It had been mortifying.

“You’re talking about my feelings for you,” Magnus says softly, running a hand over his face with a little sigh. “You’re right, of course - this was all probably a little selfish of me, all things considered. I want to assure you that I’m perfectly happy with our friendship as it is, Alexander, and I hope I haven’t caused you any discomfort.”

Alec stares at him, the words taking several long moments to sink in. It takes so long, in fact, that Magnus starts shifting awkwardly opposite him, like he’s about to leave and that just-

Alec buries his face in his hands with a hysterical bark of laughter.

“Oh my god,” Alec says, voice muffled by his hands. “Oh my _god,_ Magnus - I was talking about _me.”_ Magnus goes still again, and the silence between them grows heavier, thickening with every passing second until Alec eventually summons the courage to remove his face from his hands and look at Magnus.

Magnus, who looks _utterly_ perplexed.

“Sorry, darling,” he says eventually. “Do you want to run that by me again?”

“I was talking,” Alec says faintly, “about _my_ feelings for _you._ My very positive, very much _beyond friendly_ feelings.” Magnus continues staring at him, mouth slightly open now.

“But you avoid me an alarming amount,” he says distantly, sounding a little shaken and disbelieving. Alec would roll his eyes if he thought he could do it without getting horribly dizzy.

“Yeah, I wonder why I’d avoid my insanely hot roommate who routinely does shirtless yoga in the living room,” he says a little sharply, unable to keep some of the frustration out of his voice. “Even when you do wear clothes, you’re fucking _mesmerising_ , okay? Of course I avoid you sometimes. It’s called self-preservation.”

“Well, what about you?” Magnus says hotly, as though Alec has ever done anything attractive in his _life_ before, what the _fuck._

“What _about_ me?”

“Coming back from the gym all sweaty with your hands taped up,” Magnus begins, and Alec can see him raise a hand and start to count things off on his fingers. “Wearing those ratty jeans with the holes in that are - quite frankly - _obscene._ Stumbling out of your bedroom with your hair all wild like someone’s dragged their hands through it. Oh! That time you literally brought your bow and arrows out and started doing _sexy bow maintenance_ on the coffee table-”

Alec doesn’t know where he gets the _gall_ to do it but cutting Magnus off with his mouth seems to work pretty much as well as it does in the movies. He’s being kissed back almost immediately, the little noise of pleased surprise in the back of Magnus’s throat accompanied by a hand sliding round to Alec’s jaw, pulling him closer. Their legs end up tangled together, Magnus’s feet leaving icy impressions on Alec’s legs even through his sweatpants. It’s slow and sweet and perfect, and Alec can’t believe it’s happening.

“How are your feet so cold?” he asks dazedly when he finally pulls back from Magnus’s mouth, gratified to see how flushed and well-kissed his lips look even in the gloom.

“Bad circulation,” Magnus says with a shrug, grinning and shuffling forward a little further so he can wedge his toes under Alec’s calves. “Fortunately, it looks as though I can stop it from being a problem going forward.”

“Yeah?” Alec asks, feeling out of his depth and so very happy to be there. 

“Yes. I’m planning to ask my sexy archer- _slash_ -insurance-representative roommate to be my boyfriend, and then I’m going to sneak into his bed every night and use him as a human radiator. The plan is flawless, you see, as I’ve already set a precedent.”

“I think,” Alec says slowly, a smile creeping onto his face that’s no doubt _incredibly_ goofy, “your roommate might be willing to make a deal.”

“My boyfriend, you mean,” Magnus corrects, and Alec’s entire body feels like a firework next to an open flame in that moment; he’s all heat and potential, sparks dancing up and down his spine, hands coming to rest on either side of Magnus’s face. His skin feels surprisingly warm.

“Yeah,” he agrees, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to Magnus’s mouth, simply because he can. “Your boyfriend.” He really likes the sound of that.

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be part of a series of (hopefully) 30 little fluff pieces for Lent. Why am I doing this for Lent? Because SOMEONE I KNOW decided they were going to give up reading smut, and I'm trying to help a sister out. It's not exactly a hardship to write these guys being cute together, so let's see how many I can do before Lent's out!


End file.
